Volume 63, 2018
Philosophy of Sport
Koyo Fukasawa
Pages 9-13
A Basis of the Interconnection of Athletes in Interpersonal Athletics
From the Perspectives of Nishida’s ‘I-Thou’ Relationship
In this paper, I aim to explore a basis of interconnection of athletes in interpersonal athletics. The respect for their opponents needs a certain mutual understanding. The founder of Judo, Jigoro Kano (1860-1938), advocates the ideal of ‘mutual prosperity for self and others’. In order to assume that athletes confronting each other realize this ideal, we have to find out the possibility to connect athletes in some way. And we can name Kitaro Nishida(1870-1945) as one of the pioneers of Japanese philosophy, who developed an unique philosophical investigation based on Eastern philosophy. I will interpret the interconnection of athletes from the ‘pure experience’ and ‘I-Thou’ relationship which he referred. Empathy, which is an example of interconnection, means to assume an event occurred on the other (object) as that on the self (subject). This framework of this understanding, however, seems to have some methodological limits, e.g. solipsism or dualism. Nishida attempts to overcome this theoretical difficulty by introducing ‘pure experience’ into the issue of identifying subject with object. For example, Judoka is required to react as swiftly as possible to the opponent’s attack. In that moment he/she could perceive the opponent’s state and react to the attack at the corporeal level regardless of his/her consciousness.